Aussies and yanks in Vietnam.

[red750]

Like so many stories on Facebook, you get half (or less) of what looks like a good story, then it says "Continued in comments".  This usually means that there is a link in the first comment to the rest of the story, but often the link is missing, or links to an entirely different story. In this case, the link was missing. However, here is what was displayed.

 

Five American soldiers walked into the jungle alongside four Australians. 4 days later, the Americans walked out, changed men. Their afteraction report contained a single phrase that would echo through Mayv headquarters for months. We are not ready for this. Wait, not ready. These were Rangers from the 101st Airborne. 

 Men who had survived firefights that would break most soldiers. And yet, after 96 hours moving through Vietnamese jungle with Australian SAS operators, they filed a report that read, "Less like a military assessment and more like a confession of inadequacy." Oh, this story gets so much stranger than you think because what those American soldiers witnessed in those four days.

 The methods, the silence, the way those Australians moved through triple canopy jungle like they owned every shadow was so fundamentally different from everything they had been trained to believe about warfare that some of them requested never to patrol with the Aussies again. One lieutenant came back and told his commanding officer three words that got immediately classified. They're not human.

 You're about to discover why the most powerful military on Earth started sending its elite soldiers to learn from 120 men from a country most Americans knew only for kangaroos and beer. And trust me, by the end of this video, you'll understand why the Vietkong stopped referring to them as soldiers at all.

 They called them something else. Maang, the jungle ghosts. Stay with me. Natrang, September 1966. The May TV Recondo School had just opened its doors to train American long- range reconnaissance patrol personnel in the dark arts of jungle warfare. The facility sprawled across a compound near the massive naval air base, its training schedule designed to push soldiers to the absolute limits of endurance and skill.

 three weeks, 260 hours of classroom and field instruction culminating in an actual combat patrol through enemy controlled territory. The school's commonant, Major AJ Baker, had assembled what he believed to be the finest reconnaissance instructors in the American military. Green Berets who had run operations from the demilitarized zone to the Meong Delta.

 Veterans of Project Delta, men who had earned their reputations tracking communist forces through some of the most hostile terrain in Southeast Asia. But Baker knew something that troubled him deeply, something he would not speak about publicly, but that kept him awake on humid Vietnamese nights. His instructors, skilled as they were, were teaching methods developed for a different kind of war.

 And there was one group operating in country who had already solved the puzzle that American forces were still trying to figure out. The Australians had arrived in Puaktoy province in April of 1966 with a mandate that differed fundamentally from American doctrine. While US forces measured success in body counts and territory seized, the Australians had been given a single objective.

 Pacify the province using whatever methods necessary. The key phrase was whatever methods. Within the Australian task force operated a unit so small it barely registered on American organizational charts. The Special Air Service Regiment. three squadrons rotating through Vietnam, never more than 120 men in country at any given time.

 Their official designation was reconnaissance. Their actual function was something far more primal, something that would force American military doctrine to confront uncomfortable truths about the nature of jungle warfare. The first American personnel to observe Australian SAS operations did so almost by accident. In May of 1967, a squad of US Longrange Reconnaissance Patrol soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division had been attached to one squadron SAS for what was supposed to be a routine exchange program.

 The Americans arrived at Nuiidat, the Australian base, expecting to find familiar patterns. Professional soldiers conducting professional operations with perhaps a few tactical variations that came from operating in a different area of operations. What they found instead would fundamentally challenge everything they understood about warfare in Vietnam.

 Sergeant Michael Patterson had served two tours in Vietnam before his assignment to the Australian Exchange Program. He had run patrols through the Iron Triangle, conducted search and destroy operations in the Central Highlands, and survived firefights that had earned him two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. He was not, by any measure, a novice to jungle combat.

 His first morning at New Dat Patterson watched an Australian SAS patrol prepare for insertion. Five men, each carrying approximately 80 lb of equipment. M16 rifles with modified flash suppressors. Enough ammunition to simulate the firepower of a force three times their size. Rations for 5 days. No air support pre-positioned. No artillery fire plan.

No quick reaction force on standby, just five men who would walk into enemy controlled territory and not make contact with base for 72 hours. What struck Patterson immediately was the silence. American patrols buzzed with lastminute activity before insertion. Radio checks, weapons checks, final coordination with helicopter crews.

 

ooooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooo

 

This is where the link should have been. Some of the replies, apparently from American members, commented on how great the Special Forces soldiers were and how undertrained they made the Yanks look. Unfortunately when you leave a Facebook page to do something like create this post, then go back for more, the screen refreshes and you lose it. There were a couple of replies I would like to have copied.

 

 

[willedoo]

I remember a few years ago listening to an ex SAS bloke on Conversations with Richard Fidler. He'd written a book about his experiences. One thing that stuck in my mind was his description of the long term physical injuries that he ended up with (in his case mainly back issues) doing what they had to do. One thing was carrying heavy pack loads, but he also described the physical strain of ambush and/or observation exercises where thay had to sit in the one spot and not move for many hours or days on end. Movement is the main give-away on a stakeout so he said it could take 15 minutes or more to have a drink of water. A lot of time spent very slowly signalling others to take over his arc of responsibility, then virtually a millimeter at a time going through the motions.

[Grumpy Old Nasho]

Facebook would have moderators and censors. Somethings might be just a little too sensitive for the public to learn about.

[red750]

They let so much garbage through it's unbelievable. Reports of famous people dying while they are still alive, ruthless takedowns of famous actors like Robert Redford, Cary Grant, Dick Van Dyke having sex with 99 men, others raping dozens of women, etc.

 

I have complained many times through the feedback page but nothing is done. Lots of story links blocked by my antivirus. So don't expect Facebook (Meta) to check and correct things.

[rgmwa]

There's plenty of videos on uTube in the same vein as that article, generally saying how the Australian SAS soldiers far outclassed the elite American troops in the jungle. I'm not sure how much is true and how much is hype.  Here's a typical one.

 

 

[onetrack]

The Yanks sent a group of their soldiers to Jungle Training Centre, Canungra, so they could go through the Jungle warfare course that all Aussie soldiers had to pass, before being sent overseas to combat zones.

None of them could complete it. They packed it in and went home.

 

It was a bastard of a course, all designed to get Aussie soldiers used to real jungle warfare conditions. The worst part was slithering through deep mud on your back to get under a huge mat of barbed wired, with barely enough room to slide under it - all the while you were under live fire (just above your head, of course) and enduring constant but irregular detonations of explosives, just to simulate mines and artillery shells and grenades going off.

 

Then you had to scramble up obstructions to reach the top of a 10 metre tower - then jump off the tower into a river that was about 50 metres wide - which you had to cross, of course.

There was a rope dangling in the river which you could use to help yourself. Naturally, you also had to be carrying a fully-equipped backpack containing around 15 kgs, and your rifle - which you had to try and keep dry.

 

After you made it to the other side, there was slippery, muddy, mountainous terrain to climb - and I mean it was that steep, you were on your hands and knees. Then there was the M60 machine gun that also had to be carried up that mountain.

When one bloke peaked out with carrying the M60, someone else had to take it. After you made to the plateau at the top, you had to make camp for the night - wet or not.

 

Of course, you had to post sentries al night, because this was the Jungle, and enemy were always probing your defences. So sleep was pretty patchy. 

Next day you had to walk a jungle trail with an F1 SMG - and shoot at targets that suddenly and unexpectedly popped up each side of the trail. These were enemy soldiers, taking potshots at you.

You had  to set up enemy ambushes, hide yourself completely - then endure many hours of waiting and waiting and waiting, for enemy to appear. In the hot sun, in the rain, in the cold. There was no respite, you dare not move.

The enemy always appeared after a very long wait of course - and when you least expected them. If you messed up the ambush, you got to do it again.

 

The obstacle courses were endless and made you exert yourself to the max. Climbing over huge walls, jumping through courses laid with tyres - all in mud of course. Scrambling up 10 metre ropes to cross other obstacles.

I can only remember a few of them, possibly because my memory doesn't want to recall the rest. They were all designed to make you exert yourself to your limits. And you always carried your rifle with you, at all times.

 

The course took 10 days out of your life, and at the end of it you were pretty buggered - but if you passed the course, you got your ticket to go to a real war zone, which was often far more different again to Canungra.

 

American soldiers could never go anywhere in a group without making a lot of noise, giving off a lot of smells (cannabis and aftershave and scented soaps), and they were so trigger-happy, they were dangerous to be around.

The SAS took especial pains to ensure they gave off no smell, never followed any kind of track or trail, were silent to an unbelievable level (hand signals were refined to the nth degree), and they often followed enemy and determined their likely path - then moved ahead of them, and waited silently and in hiding, for the enemy to pass.

 

Then they'd step out behind the last of the enemy and dispatch them with as little sound as possible - then drag their body off the trail.

The enemy would be totally unnerved at how their "tail end Charlies" could just vanish without a sound or a trace. It was psychological war at its finest.

 

Edited 5 hours ago by onetrack